These eight Familiar famous faces, along with nine other Galway ladies will
adorn the walls of the Kenny Gallery this month as part of an innovative
collaboration between the Galway rape Crisis Centre and an Athenry Based
portrait artist Jenny O’Brien. The 12 women will also feature in a Galway Rape
Crisis Centre 2007 Calendar. Tah artist was inspired by a piece in a Newspaper
about the work of the centre.She approached the management team with her idea
for her fund reaising project, the result of which is this unique portrait exhibition
entitled Inspirational Women of Galway…

The artist herself view the undertaking as one of her biggest challenges to date.
Portraiture is her first love and she works primarily with the traditional medium of
oil on canvas which gives her freedom and flexibility when painting.
“For the portraits, I worked mostly from photographs and met as many of the
women as I could. It has taken about 14 months to complete and my aim was to
capture the personality behind the image.

I wanted to do each of the individual
characters justice” says O’Brien. “As well as being artistically rewarding, it
makes it all the more special because the proceeds will be going to a well
deserved charity”
… Says Centre co-ordinator Tanja Alanko-O’Malley “Just over a year ago,
we had begun brainstorming ideas when Jenny approached us with her
concept and it was exactly the type of project we had envisioned. We loved
the idea of having portraits of women from all walks of life.. Jenny’s timing was
perfect and we were delighted to work with an artist of her calibre and experience”.